In 1906, Shipley and Hornell erected Carpobothrium Shipley and Hornell, 1906 with Carpobothrium chiloscyllii Shipley and Hornell, 1906, collected from a Slender bambooshark (Chiloscyllium indicum [Gmelin, 1789]) off North Modragam [sic] Paar in Sri Lanka, as its type. Establishment of this new genus was based largely on the unusual morphology of its bothridia, each of which was interpreted by Shipley and Hornell (1906; pg. 54) to consist of “a circular, slightly concave area, from the centre of which emerge 2 processes, slightly flattened and opposed to one another”. These processes differed from one another in that “The process which is nearer to the center of the head is obcordate like a violet leaf, the second process is rounded.” At the base of these processes “a ring of muscle fibres, which is, however, broken into two halves” was observed. At present, the genus consists ofCarpobothrium chiloscylliiandCarpobothrium megaphallum (Suphapradha, 1955), all other species previously included in this genus are nowspeciesinquirenda, or are names considered unavaliable.
